Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Alright, I`ll just start with the biggest event of this week, the most terrible event of all my mission that left me very sad that night and tired as I didn`t get to bed until midnight, I`m talking about `The Flood`.

We were having a normal day really and at about six in the evening we were having a lesson in the house of the family Cuc-ac, a combination of two families really living in the same house, the rain started to pour a lot, lightning and such and the family was telling us of a time when water entered their house, they live next to the river, a few minutes later a puddle started forming at the door as water began to enter as the river was rising a little, but the rain kept coming down and now the water began to rise higher so that it covered the whole floor, this isn`t normal, a little is fine considering the pounding rain, but more? No.

We started to save things that were on the ground, panic mode had not started yet as there did not seem to be much danger at the moment, but the water kept rising, a minute later the mentioned panic started set it. The water got high enough to enter my boots (very large boots) when we evacuated the house, the water kept rising steadily and we battled our way up the street right outside as it had converted into a river up to my thighs almost. The water was running hard and we got off of that street and heading away from the river where we saw that the water was still rising a little bit and found ourselves in the middle of Canlun in a shop, at this shop the water was only enough to enter the house and cover the floor, higher than any time that the residence knows.

People were already there as a sort of refuge, we stopped there to gather our wits and to pray, I was asking our God why this was happening and why we were not warned of it before hand, we had no warning, spiritual or not. I then made a decision, the decision to stop questioning God and to trust his judgement and help others and to learn and have faith. I shall never forget this night nor will I forget the crying of the family Cuc-ac and thier little child of 3 years old as I carried him crying in my arms as we walked the two more blocks to the church. Water still present, but not lowering instead of rising.

The church and our house were two of the few houses that were not affected by water entering in. After doing what we could to help that night we slept unsoundly and got up in the morning to provide service, After a nights rest and some good reflection on the events I realized that sometimes the Spirit will not warn us of danger, not that he likes to see us suffer, but that we are already in the place that we need to be. If we were not with the Cuc-ac family that night some of them may have lost their lives.

The damage was great, but many things were saved and only a few houses were affected majorly, but everyone had a whole lot of mud that we helped clear out, water damage isn`t as severe of a thing here and the houses are made of sticks and most of the things people use are made of wood or something actually easily rebuilt so right now Canlun is almost back to normal, but the effects and lessons we learned will not go away so easily.

So, a trial of faith, but my faith has increased from events this week and I have grown in ways that I probabl would not have if not going through something like that. Going through the `refiner`s fire` as we call it.

So... That`s the big news this week, in other news I am leaving Canlun, I have recieved a transfer and I am going to the mountains to an area called Coral Pek with Elder Vargus from Nicaragua. I`m very excited for this new chapter and adventure in my mission, and I will always keep in my heart Canlun.

No mail this week, I know, disappointing for those who want to hear that their letters have made it safely, but that`s how things are here, we don`t get mail often.

It costs $1.15 to mail a letter to him. You can use regular envelops and stamps just make sure they equal $1.15. If it weights more than a regular letter you should take it to the post office to have it weighed.

Monday, October 20, 2014

Last week I told of my tales about my little mice friends (thought my mom would REALLY enjoy that), although they are not really my friends as I want them out of the house dead or alive. This other guy is a different thing. Alright, so this is how it goes...We were preparing to go out to work after church yesterday and Elder Santisteban needed to get something from his suitcase. It was under the kitchen counter, upon movig it a tarantula of about medium size scurried out. Surprisingly it didn't scare Elder Santisteban like the mice did. So instead of doing a dance on it's head we used a broom and had it in the middle of the room and started taking pictures of it. Then I caught it. I plan to let him loose as missionaries are not supposed to have pets, and plus I dont' know how to feed him.

This week went really well, it went by quickly but at the same time very slow. We have an investigator that is found in the little village called Kanlun 2, it is like Kanlun but it is a littler farther away. Fancy naming it that! So this investigators name is Ofelia. I told a little about her last week I believe. We have a baptismal date with her set for the 15th of November. I am not sure I will be here for that, but I will work as if I will be.

We have been working with more less active members. Some of which really annoy me because their children love getting on my nerves and making fun of me kind of, not nice, but trial of patience.

We have been able to find some new people as well through giving random service throughout the week. Carrying some things or helping with some of their daily chores and all that. Service to others
is service to God, remember that.

No mail, I thought I might have gotten some but I didn't. The next time I will get mail is the first week of November I believe. Which is kind of a bummer, but mail is always wonderful whenever I get it. You all just need to keep writing and hope that I can find time to write back. (hehhe)

It costs $1.15 to mail a letter to him. You can use regular envelops and stamps just make sure they equal $1.15. If it weights more than a regular letter you should take it to the post office to have it weighed.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Yes, I am finally 19 years old, so with my birthday this week,
it happened I really didn`t do anything special, but hey, I`m on a
mission, we worked and it was great!

We had great attendance this week! Although sacrament meeting is always depressing at
the start because almost all the people here are in the terrible habit
of being late. `The meeting is at 9:00? Alright, that means I get ready at 9:00
and then go.´ I wouldn´t mind as much if they weren`t missing one of
the most important things of all time, the sacrament, important enough
that there was a whole entire talk in general conference about it`s
importance.

Bugs inside the smiling bug house.

We had several investigators in church, one
that has been an investigator for a while and his daughter is on a
mission and some of his other children have been baptized, he drinks a
lot and it`s absolutely terrible, but hey, we`re doing what we can, and
he came to church, I take it as a sign that he`s improving, and I have
faith that he can stop drinking and make the right decisions, not for
him, but for his family.

Oh how much I`ve seen how a
drinking problem can be such a huge problem, you think of drinking back
home and it`s like ´that`s an activity that`s done behind closed doors
and no one really sees it.´ That`s true, but here there are people
passed out on the streets some times at noon and one time I saw a drunk just yelling in the street as cars honked at him for him to get off of said street.

Another bug house

I`ve
never been tempted to drink or do any sort of drugs because it just
doesn`t make sense, and it`s just not something I`ve even had the desire
to try. I read an example once. A father was reading the paper on the
couch and his son asks him about alcohol and such and argues that it
wouldn`t be that bad to just try it once so he knows, the family works a
farm and the father looked at his son and said. `how about you go
outside and take some cow manure from the barn and try some of that for
dinner.` Obviously the son was disgusted and openly voiced his opinion
of it. The father then replies, `But you havn`t tried it have you? It
can`t be that bad just to try it once, just to make sure that it`s bad.´

Point of it, we already know that alcohol and drugs are bad for us.

Elder Santisteban with some ward members in the rain.

Anyway,
about the mice, we`ve been having mouse problems in our house, one day
we return home and I see a mouse run from our room and into the kitchen
under a wooden pallette type thing we had in there, so I closed our room
door, blocked the bottom so it couldn`t escape that way and started to
search for said mouse, and instead of finding just one we found three, I
ended the life of one as it hid behind a broken microwave on the floor,
I kicked it and dealt fatal damage, the other two were swept outside.

The
next day there was a foul smell, upon investigation I found that a
mouse had crawled into my fan and since the fan was on and functioning
the mouse got hit by a fan blade and died, I took apart the fan and
cleaned it thoroughly. This same day we found out that in the bed
spring of Elder Santisteban four more mice were living there, we got
another bed spring for him that same day and took care of the other.

Beautiful Guatemala

Another
adventure, we got a reference from the other mission of a lady, named
Ofelia, that has recently moved to our area from the other mission to
live with her in laws because her husband died in a motorcycle accident.
So we attend a sort of funeral party... I guess. Anyway, a catholic
church was doing the music, which was pretty much songs from thier
church and praying.... If you could call it praying, it`s more of
yelling and screaming to some sort of diety they believe is `God`, but
as we read in Mosiah, `How can a man know the master he isn`t serving?´

These
people believe they are following God with all their hearts, but they
don`t know him and are really just being fooled into following something
else. While attending and listening to the music I became doubly
grateful for our religion and revelation.We`ll be working with this family more this week.

It
costs $1.15 to mail a letter to him. You can use regular envelops and
stamps just make sure they equal $1.15. If it weights more than a
regular letter you should take it to the post office to have it weighed.

Monday, October 6, 2014

You sent cheese! That's a little bit of a risk considering it's not a thing you only have to refrigerate after opening, but it's still good! Unexpectedly I got mail at General Conference, two letters from Grandma Mary and a package from Mom and Grandpa North. So I got to watch conference with some awesome scooby snacks, felt like home, except more Spnaishy and a little less comfortable chairs.

What he doesn't know is we did research and sent him Hickory Farms Cheese and so its all good.

A boy that was doing a model walk, I took video

My new companion is interesting I must say, he's very obedient and has been helping me with Spanish and all sorts of things. He speaks about the same amount of Kekchi that I do, but he's a bit faster with it. We're going to be learning that together through teaching, because that's the best way to learn a language, SPEAK IT. My new companion is Peruvian so that makes my line up of companions come up to 2 North Americans and 3 Peruvians, and if we count the CCM, 1 Brazilian. Elder Santisteban has a really powerful testimony because he used to be part of the Evangelical church in his country and was preparing to be a pastor in it. He knows the Bible really well and has been a great help in my studies. Very neat and clean as well, something that's not too common here. Not to say the others were not neat and clean, they were about as neat and clean as I am, but our house now is pretty much in perfect cleanliness condition, except for the mouse we can't seem to find. He's there, the signs are everywhere, by way of mouse droppings. Elusive little fellow.

I watched conference completely in Spanish, didn't have a choice in the matter. Obviously every missionary is buzzing about general conference right now. I just want to touch on some of the highlights which for me was that they had some of the speakers do their talks in their own language. I was watching it in Spanish the whole time because the first day we didn't have power in the chapel in Sacsuha so we had to watch it in Teleman by internet in Spanish. The second day we watched in Sacsuha but they didn't set up English for us...Oh well, I got Spanish skills. I didn't get subtitles when they spoke in Spanish. I was really cool to have them speak different languages. Can you imagine how those people must have felt hearing the actual voice of a general authority instead of a translater? I can imagine, I saw it, they were quite ecstatic about it. Especially since TWO people spoke in Spanish, we win.

Bug

I'll try to take more pictures of my....well, it's not a city, it's a village.

The muck boots do not go over my shoes. I use the insoles of my ecco's when I need to wear them to make them more comfortable, but other than that I had to get use to them. If you want to send me anything in for Christmas send me a pair of Ecco insoles, size 42.

No blisters, and only sometimes I get sunburns. The sun burns a little less when it's humid actually. I did get a skin infection and my arm wasn't pretty. I got medicine for it and such, but that's a long story actually and it wasn't fatal or anything. I will have a scar on my arm for quite some time.

I have not learned how to make tortillas, I'll ask someone to teach me this week.

This week was terrible for the work in the sense that all our numbers were really low, except we did have quite a bit of people attending the conference on Sunday. Why were our numbers really low? Well, I have a new companion and I'm getting him to know the area and people. We only really got to work for three days and during those three days we met more with the members and we couldn't get a member to leave with us. The power went out one of those days, when the power is out and it's dark outside we need to return home. Not to worry thought we found a new person and a few potential people. We have a plan for next week that looks solid and all that stuff.

My companion with lots of kids.

Hope you all had a fantastic conference weekend! Remember, follow the prophet.

Love,Elder North

Elder North's birthday is on Saturday. Guess he opened his presents early! HEHEHHEIf you would like to know more about conference or listen to a session or talk you can go to the link below.https://www.lds.org/church/events/181st-general-conference-of-the-church?lang=engElder Jered NorthGuatemala Cobán MissionApartado Postal #343ra Calle 2-02, Zona 3Cobán AV 16001Guatemala, Central America

It costs $1.15 to mail a letter to him. You can use regular envelops and stamps just make sure they equal $1.15. If it weights more than a regular letter you should take it to the post office to have it weighed.